


Desiderium

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fragmented Narrative, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Magic, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 04:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16968069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Desiderium noundes·i·de·ri·um | \ˌdesəˈdirēəm, -ezə-\plural desideria\-ēə \Definition of desiderium: an ardent desire or longingespecially : a feeling of loss or grief for something lost





	Desiderium

Merlin is old. Maybe. His appearance some days flows like the weather. Grey hair sprouts and his beard goes dark. His back stoops and unstoops; his skin ebbs and flows, tight across his cheeks, loose around his neck. He used to have control over it, used to have control over a lot of things.

Something was taken from him, though. Something precious, something irreplaceable.Everything in him aches with emptiness. His bones groan like old rocking chairs. His breath rattles like wind through frozen branches.

He can’t remember where he is. A nice cliff, salty sea-spray stiff against his coat. Everything here is soft, muted. Greys and beiges and creams and faded greens. Even the blue of the sky seems to be half-awake here.

Where ever here is.

Here is familiar, like the scars on his skin. They haven’t always been there, and he rarely remembers how he got them. But the pain lingers like an old friend, just out of reach. Here,  _ here _ he lost something.

Here has changed. The cliff’s edge has only grown sharper, angrier. The sea more volatile, the salt more biting. Here the sand coats everything. It gets in the crease of his elbows and chafes at his jaws and crust beneath his toes. A lover’s touch, cruel and lingering.

He’s waiting. That’s what he told the boy in the skiff.

_ Waiting for what? A storms a comin’. _

_ Perhaps it is the storm, then. _

He is cold. Heaven, is he ever cold. He was warm. He can remember the phantom sun against his skin. In fields of wheat, braced in a building all built from stone. Sweat, and skin, and sheets too fine to be any he owned.

Someone held him. Close, too close, never close enough.

He wraps his arms about himself and tries to remember the taste of sweat.

_ Does he miss me? _

The thought almost throws him into the sea.

He, he,  _ he _ who bathed in gold and hope.

He who…

Did he love? Did he hold Merlin close?

_ Were his eyes the same shade as the storm-bringing sky? _

Merlin was named for, perhaps a bird. Or maybe for the static beneath his skin. Static has always followed him. Static used to have another name.

Static used to be stronger. Static could bring down forest and cleave mountains in half.

Now, static mostly knocks mugs from the shelves, and makes Merlin’s hair grey, black, grey-black-grey.

He is old, and tired, and laughter haunts his dreams.

He laughs, at a joke he doesn’t understand. It spills from him, frantic and bruised and for a moment, he sees a sharp nose and a crooked tooth.

He needs to be here. He is waiting for warmth and laughter and arms that fit about his shoulder. He is waiting for the gaps in his mind. No, that’s wrong. He’s waiting for the one to fill them.

Someone is returning. Merlin thinks that might be the reason he lives. But he can’t remember who is returning, or why he should stay.

A king, a crown. Images he’s inked into his skin. Why though? There’s a notebook. It’s written in scribbles. A girl with flowers told him once it was his writing, his language.

_ Bah, these scribbles. Nonsense. _

But there’s a crown, a king, and he’s by the sea. He doesn’t know why. He has to be here, has to stay. Has to come back after the storm runs him away. He aches here, his body, his heart, his mind.

But here he can almost taste sweat and sunshine, and here the yearning only half claims his breath.


End file.
